BELIEFS ABOUT THE LEARNING ENVIRONMENT WE CREATE
5. Belief: The total environment of a school has a powerful effect on students’ learning.
Teachers must participate actively with their colleagues to shape the school as a learning environment. They must learn how to play a role in strengthening the institution and see themselves as players beyond the classroom, responsible for the system of the school. For this to happen, interdependence and collegiality need to be built into the fabric of their working relationships. Interdependence requires that they function as both leaders and team players and that they sup- port a balance of autonomy and cohesion in curriculum and teaching practices.
Skillful teachers are leaders who take the initiative to influence colleagues to- ward ideas they value and move the school toward practices they believe will strengthen everyone. They are team players, collaborating with colleagues to improve the school and help individual students, and willing to give up some autonomy for actions implied by common visions and agreements.
The connection between teacher learning and this belief in interdependence and collegiality is that only teachers who have regular interaction with their colleagues through joint work can experience the benefit of their knowledge and the synergy of creating new knowledge with others.
6. Belief: Learning is constructed as learners assimilate new experience with prior knowledge.
Teachers who accept this belief must construct learning experiences where learners are active, applying knowledge, and reflecting on its meaning out loud or in writ- ing. It is their responsibility to create a balance between students’ time receiving new information and practicing skills and their time actively constructing, assimi- lating, and applying that information in real contexts. This implies that teachers learn a variety of models of teaching and take it on themselves to learn how to develop the influence strand of classroom climate described in Chapter 16. It par- ticularly moves them to learn skills for making students’ thinking visible and find ways to activate students’ knowledge in relation to new concepts (see Chapter 11, “Clarity”).
T H E S K I L L F U L T E A C H E R24
PART ONE | ESSENTIAL BELIEFS | SCHOOLING
It is a teacher’s professional responsibility to design an environment in which each child can succeed.
7. Belief: Learning varies with the degree to which a learner’s needs for inclusion, influence, competence, and confidence are met.
The psychological and cognitive milieu that teachers create has an enormous impact on what and how children learn. It is a teacher’s professional respon- sibility to design an environment in which each child can succeed. Such an environment is characterized by community, mutual support, risk-taking, and higher-level thinking for all. It is also characterized by explicit attention to stu- dents’ social and emotional learning.
Teachers cannot narrow their self-definition to being representatives of aca- demic disciplines only. They must think of themselves as teachers of students as well as teachers of a particular discipline. Influencing student motivation becomes part of their job description, as well as teaching social skills. And they become particularly interested in the skills for getting students to exert effective effort (see Chapter 14, “Expectations”).